Baby girl!

I stopped my monthly letters because you’re growing so fast that it would impossible to keep track of everything, and you’re increasingly (I would never think it’d be possible) taking more of my time playing and having fun that it’s not something I can keep up with. However, there is also so much cuteness that I want to make sure I never forget.

So I will write these to you occasionally when inspiration strikes and your sleep schedule allows :) This letter encompasses the best age so far: 22-25 months (pics are from 22 months, all outfits are from Lourdes). I wanted to include a video, but that is A LOT OF work, so I will have to create it later and put it into a different post.

As a little treat for me and those of you who have grown to love Alexis, I’ve put together a compilation of my favorite short 6-15 second Instagram videos that span a whole year! Thank you for being a part of our lives and for all the support!

If you’ve seen the earlier clips, skip closer towards the end for the latest shots, including her cute phrases and gymnastic moves.

I started writing this post a few months ago and now coming back to it, the truth is she is changing soooo fast cognitively that it’s absolutely useless to be writing a post about it. Things that impressed me yesterday are old news and now she’s doing something even better. So I’ll put down age next to each item as I write them down for reference.

Obviously by this time she understands about 80% of everything we say (daily stuff) and 99% of everything we say to her.

She hears things we think she wouldn’t understand and reacts to them. Many times daily I think to myself: “I can’t believe she did/said/understood that. I need to write it down.”

But then by the end of the day I can’t even remember all the things that happened.

Some of the photos got over-sharpened in the process, but I was out of time to redo the collages. Boo.

Once most of the guests left, we let the babies play at the Svan Table and Chairs ( which by the way is the best freaking thing ever). Some roses and sweet snacks entertained them for a very long time.

Then we had a mini photoshoot of the (technically two) birthday girls, Alexis and Alexa and finally just hung out with the family and opened gifts.

I won’t be giving you a play-by-play- the photos are pretty self-explanatory.

How much fun are toddlers?

But it’s true. We’ve known that Alexis has been focusing on her physical development for a while now. It has been constant since about 9 months when she first started walking supported.

What’s interesting is that it has not changed until maybe now (16 months) when she started to work on her speech development in parallel (another post coming). But the physical aspect is and has been front and center.

I know every baby focuses on its own thing, works on one thing at a time, or two things at a time, with one always being the primary focus. It’s usually pretty obvious in babies. If you’ve been to the playground, you’ve seen a kid who’s in non-stop motion, climbing a top of everything, demanding swing rides, slides, rushed from one side to another, runs around with his mouth open, screams. Then there are talkers, builders, collectors, swing babies, slide babies….

We’ve been having a ton of fun dusting off my long forgotten SingStar disks, Rockband game and our keyboard and drums.

Alexis instantly took to all of it and asks to go sing and play several times a day. It’s really cute, too, the way she asks for it. She will point in the direction of our movie room and sing “Dadabada” while dancing :)

I can’t help but notice her taste in rockstar clothing is pretty awesome, too. Nununu star romper couldn’t be used for a better occasion.

I know I only recently wrote a post on sign and using sign languages for babies, but it has been getting better and better.

Lexi’s verbal development has taken back seat to her physical development ever since she started walking, so while she keeps adding words to her vocabulary little by little, her use of signs has exploded.